Guardian to launch ‘reflective’ iPad app at £9.99 per month

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After taking its time in development the Guardian has finally announced an iPad app, which is coming “any day now” apparently. According to editor Alan Rusbridger, the app will not focus on breaking news but be a “more reflective” read.

We’re not going to be scrambling to update it every minute or every hour. We will do that on the browser, the browser is a place to go for liveblogging and to go searching for material, but this is going to be a different kind of read, it’s going to be more reflective.

It seems like the thinking behind the app will take it away from the web browser experience and closer to what Guardian has in mind for its print edition. Although producing a static, print-like app may seem a little strange for a “digital-first” news organisation (especially one that creates a promo video for its app criticising the idea of “recreating the newspaper on the iPad”), it’s a move that makes sense in many ways. It looks at the tablet as more of a lean-back device for evenings, which research by Bit.ly and others has shown is a popular time for iPad use, something to supplement breaking news on Guardian.co.uk and via the iPhone app.

The app will be free for the first three months after launch thanks to a sponsorship deal with Channel 4, after which it will cost £9.99 per month. Six- and seven-day print subscribers will get access to the app bundled with their deal, although the app won’t include content from the Observer.

The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 1-7 October

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1. Daily Mail criticised over Amanda Knox guilty story

2. How to: become a roaming reporter

3. ‘If this then that’: ten recipes for journalists

4. Irish Post to be revived by Loot publisher

5. ‘Tenacious’ journalists win press freedom awards

6. Tool of the week for journalists – Topsy, real-time search for the social web

7. BBC to cut nearly 2,000 jobs

8. Free speech groups call for release of Vietnamese blogger

9. Bectu considers legal action over BBC Wales job cuts

10. Phone hacking: Mosley bankrolling Prescott’s case

 

#followjourn – @duncanhooper Duncan Hooper/managing editor

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Who? Duncan Hooper

Where? Duncan is managing editor of news and sport at MSN UK

Twitter? @duncanhooper

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

BBC News Android app now lets users submit stories, videos and photos

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The BBC News Android app has been updated to accept user-generated content and encourage people to send in their photographs and videos of a news event, something user of the BBC News iPhone app had already been able to do.

The Android app, which has been downloaded more than two million times globally since its launch in May, has also been updated to include the addition of homescreen widgets, improved personalisation and the ability to store the app on the SD card.

A BBC Internet Blog post details the changes.

BBC news chief calls for pressure on Iran after threats to journalists’ families

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The director of BBC Global News, Peter Horrocks, has called on the government to “take all necessary means” to deter the Iranian government from attempts to “undermine free media” in Iran.

Writing on the BBC Editors’ blog, Horrocks says that the families of UK-based Iranian journalists working for the BBC have been harassed, arrested and threatened in Iran in order to encourage their relatives to stop working for the corporation.

The article states:

Iranian police and officials have been arresting, questioning and intimidating the relatives of BBC staff. We believe that the relatives and friends of around 10 BBC staff have been treated this way.

Last month a group of filmakers were arrested in Iran. Contrary to reports on state TV in Iran, they where not members of staff,  but the BBC Persian channel had bought the rights to their films and they are therefore “paying the price for an indirect connection to the BBC”, according to Horrocks’ post.

These actions and threats against the BBC have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in anti-BBC rhetoric. Iranian officials have claimed that BBC staff are employees of MI6, that named staff have been involved in crimes, including sexual crimes, and that BBC Persian is inciting designated terror groups to attack Iran.

Whilst these claims are clearly absurd, the intensity of language magnifies the fears of BBC staff for their family and friends back in Iran. Given the vulnerability of those family members we have thought hard about drawing attention to this harassment. But this public statement has the full support of all staff whose families have been intimidated.

In the statement Horrocks calls on the government for assistance.

The BBC calls on the Iranian government to repudiate the actions of its officials. And we request the British and other governments take all necessary means to deter the Iranian government from all these attempts to undermine free media.

What journalists and publishers need to know about the iPhone 4S and iOS 5

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There are a three of posts worth reading if you want to work out which features unveiled in yesterday’s Apple announcements are relevant to journalists and the industry.

Poynter has a five things journalists need to know about the new iPhone 4S and iOS 5.

Jeff Sonderman states the five benefits of the iPhone 4S and iOS5 are:

1. A price drop for older models of iPhone;

2. An 8 megapixel camera;

3. Safari reading mode, enabling single-column reading and a ‘save for later’ Instapaper-style feature;

4. NewsStand, a development of interest to newspaper and magazine publishers. The Guardian explains what NewsStand means for publishers in this article written when the feature was announced in June;

5. Twitter integration.

The Next Web last night (Tuesday, October 4) published details of Apple’s US publisher partners for NewsStand. The New York Times, GQ, Wired, National Geographic are all on board, according to this post.

Journalisted Weekly: Labour Conference, Dr Conrad Murray and BAE

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

Labour Conference, Dr Conrad Murray and BAE

for the week ending Sunday 2 October
  • The Labour Party Conference in Liverpool was the most covered story this week
  • Trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor and job losses at BAE systems covered lots
  • Stirling Prize, New Zealand rugby crisis and Assange autobiography covered little

Covered lots

Covered little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs. serious

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

Who wrote a lot about… the ongoing debt crisis in Europe

Long form journalism

Journalists who have updated their profile

  • Gethin Chamberlain is the South Asia correspondent at The Observer. He has previously held posts as foreign correspondent at the Sunday Telegraph, chief reporter at The Scotsman and as the Edinburgh bureau chief at the Daily Record. You can follow Gethin on Twitter: @newsandpics
  • Julian Evans works freelance for Prospect, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Telegraph, The Independent and The Traveller. He has also written for BBC Radio and BBC Four, and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of England. He has written several books and recieved many awards for his work. Follow Julian on Twitter: @thejulianevans

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

‘If this then that’: ten recipes for journalists

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If this then that – or ifttt – is a tool that allows you to connect various other tools together to create rules or tasks. It allows you to connect 17 channels, including SMS, Facebook, WordPress and Dropbox, offering 1040 possible task combinations.

The most popular ‘recipe’, a task designed and shared by others, will give you an idea of how ifttt works. This recipe allows you to connect your Facebook and Dropbox accounts so that when someone tags you in a photo on Facebook, the photo will be added to your Dropbox folder (cloud storage allowing you to access your files on different devices).

Here are ten ifttt recipes for journalists:

1. When you receive an email from a key contact or your editor, you receive an SMS

You no doubt receive scores of emails but there are some senders that are more important to hear from than others. This recipe allows you to set up a key contact, such as a source or your editor, and receive a SMS whenever that person emails you.

2. When you post a link to Delicious, add to Dropbox

If you use Delicious to bookmark interesting stories, this recipe allows you to also save the links to Dropbox. For example, I am interested in new smartphone apps so have set up a connection so that any Delicious bookmark that I tag “app” is posted to a folder in my Dropbox account.

3. Post Google+ posts to your Facebook page

Google+ adds additional responsibility for anyone in the newsroom tasked with managing social media.

It is widely recognised that non-automated posts are best when it comes to Facebook and Google+. This recipe allows you to write a link post in Google+ and automatically post the link to your site’s Facebook page. You can also create a rule to post status updates.

To do this you need to set up an RSS feed of your Google+ account. Copy your Google+ ID, which is the long number in the URL of your Google+ profile, and paste it on the end of http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=. My Google+ feed is therefore http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=107031542976965456407, for example.

4. Create an Evernote every time you star an item in Google Reader

If you use Google Reader as your RSS feed reader and want a quick way of saving key articles to Evernote, this is a solution.

5. Post to Instapaper (or Read It Later) every time you star an article in Google Reader

If you use Instapaper to read articles later this is a quick way of posting from Google Reader.

6. Post a ‘favourite’ tweet (with links) to Instapaper (or Dropbox or Evernote)

When you come across a tweet with a link and want to save it for later you may well click star to make it a favourite. This recipe allows you to save those favourite tweets and post the linked articles to Instapaper. Alternatively, you can also set this up to save to Dropbox of Evernote.

7. Add favourite Flickr photos to Dropbox

If you post stories you write online, you may well use Flickr images with creative commons licences. Flickr allows you to indicate favourite images that you come across and may want to use at a later date. This recipe saves those images to Dropbox. Alternatively, you can set this up to save favourites to Evernote.

8. Send me an email (or SMS) to remind me about a daily meeting, weekly or monthly task.

If you have a daily or weekly meeting or task to carry out, ifttt can enable you to create reminder.

9. Send me an email (or SMS) every time a certain person tweets

Twitter is a great source for journalists but it is easy to miss a tweet from a key contact. Perhaps the key source is a person or company that only occasionally tweets and when they do you want to be alerted immediately. This recipe allows you to receive an email when an individual tweets. You can also set a rule to receive an SMS.

10. Send me an email every time a keyword is mentioned in an RSS feed

This is a recipe I suggested in a recent Journalism.co.uk tip of the day. It is a way you can set up an alert when a keyword is mentioned by a particular news provider.

If you are a journalist and have a favourite ifttt recipe, share it in the comments session below.

Tool of the week for journalists – Topsy, real-time search for the social web

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Tool of the week: Topsy

What is it? A search engine and analytics for the social web

How is it of use to journalists? Topsy is a really handy search tool for monitoring what is being discussed on the social web.

Search for a keyword or phrase and you will be presented with news articles, tweets, videos and photos. Search results are returned visually, so you can see icons and avatars beside the source.

What is particlularly useful is the ability to see how frequently a term is being used. For example, a search for “Knox” will return Twitter mentions, articles and videos. You can also click on “experts” to see what recognised news providers have published.

A search for “phone hacking” returns results and also shows the number of times the keyword has been used in the last hour, day, week, month and all time. You can also get these results shown on a graph, create and email alert or set up an RSS feed from a keyword.

You can carry out advanced searches, enabling you to include or exclude additional terms, languages and set a date range or drill down and search for a keyword used by a particular Twitter user.

As a journalist you can not only use Topsy to help you locate sources and monitor rumours (such as team talk by football fans), you can use it to add colour to an article or feature.

For example, you can use Topsy to tell you that interest in the “Amanda Knox” case has been such that her name has been mentioned 516 mentions in the last hour (the search was carried out at 4.30pm on Monday, 3 October), 3,804 times in the past day and 16,000 times overall.

 

 

You can now see how many readers are online with Google Analytics real-time reports

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Google Analytics has launched real-time data, allowing news sites to see how many readers are online and gauge the success of individual tweets.

The development was announced on the Google blog last week and is being rolled out  over the coming weeks.

You can sign-up for early access using this form.

The Google blog illustrates how real-time can be used to monitor the impact of social media.

For example, last week we posted about the latest episode of Web Analytics TV and also tweeted about the post. By campaign tagging the links we shared, we could see how much traffic each channel is driving to the blog as it happened. We could also see when we stopped receiving visits from the tweet, which helps know when to reengage.

Meanwhile, Google is also launching a premium analytics account with additonal analysis and support for an annual fixed fee, according to this blog post which has more details.

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